What age do children’s fears arise at and what is the baby afraid?

 

It is not necessary to perceive the child as a toy or as a sentient being. It is already in four months, the baby emotionally responds to the presence or absence of people close to him. At seven months, he is sensitive to the care of his mother, begins to worry, experiences... fear. Yes-Yes, precisely fear, FEAR OF SOLITUDE! The child feels support next to the mother, he knows that she will protect him, warm hands and gentle voice of the mother inspire confidence, and her absence becomes a traumatic factor. Moreover, if the mother cannot properly respond to such a manifestation of the fear in the baby, it can develop into the fear of losing the loved person.

Why is the fear of the loneliness there? Even when the baby is born, he is still connected to the mother by an umbilical cord, now emotional. The mother and the baby perceive himself as a single, inseparable whole. When the mother is not around, he ceases to feel support and care, and as a result, there is anxiety, turning into the fear.

The child grows up and by the age of two begins to realize himself in this world as a person and understand his difference from other people. The fear of loneliness dulls, becomes less acute, but still remains. “Mother, don’t go away, I’m afraid!” – the two-years-old baby cries, and mother simply not represents herself, what he can be afraid. However, in reality he is just afraid to be alone, having faced to face with such the world as hostile and the terrible one.

It is very early, at the age of eight months, there is the fear of the strangers. The baby tries to cling to his mother, turns from the strangers, the worries and the cries away. This fear is associated with the instinct of self-preservation. Subconsciously, the child is afraid of the strangers who can harm him. And only when he realizes that the stranger will not give him trouble, the fear gradually passes.

The child grows up and the fear of the strangers instinctively ceases to be so acute. It is already in a year and four months, he is not so calmly accepts the strangers, but the fear does not disappear completely. If your baby is very emotional, the reaction to the appearance of the strangers can be the embarrassment or the shyness.

Approximately at the age of three years, the child is actively acquainted with the environment that is the adults read him the books, he watches the cartoons and looks at the pictures. At this time, the fear before the strangers can be a consequence of the fear in front of the fairy-tale characters, before the unknown, still not the known world.

If the fear of loneliness is most likely associated with the social aspect of the fear of being rejected by the society, the fear of the unknown world and fairy-tale characters is based more on the instinct of the self-preservation. The child is instinctively afraid of his life and health.

This fear is experienced by almost all children. But with the proper education and friendly support of the adults, it quickly passes. With an unfavorable combination of the circumstances, the presence of the anxiety and the fears in the adults surrounding the child, their disregard to his emotional state that is the anxiety develops into the anxiety and fear in timidity, which subsequently are formed in the sustainable, traits character.

If the children up to three years express the instinctive fears more often, the fears of the older children are already meaningful and concretized.

Any parent or the caregiver can immediately name a lot of children’s fears. One child is afraid to ride a slide, climb somewhere, another one hysterically afraid of water, the kid will not agree to swim in the pool, the third one is horrified at the sight of an unfamiliar dog, the fourth baby begins to cry as soon as he hears the words “a doctor” or “the injection”.

In three-five years, the children are also afraid of the fairy-tale characters or any animals, which is a lot contributed by the adults. More than once or twice you can hear how the mother, putting the baby to sleep, says to him: “Close your eyes soon, and now Baba Yaga will come!” And with her intonation, the mother shows that she is afraid of this terrible Baba Yaga herself. What can we say about the baby! At first, he copies his mother’s fear, without experiencing it himself, since he does not know what Baba Yaga looks like and how she can someone harm. But when he sees the appropriate pictures in the book of the fairy tales, watch the cartoons with the participation of Baba Yaga and listen to the stories of the adults about what this Baba Yaga is evil and how she acts with the disobedient children, the kids begin to be afraid of her truly.

The children of this age are also characterized by the fear of the bad dreams, the fear of some animals, the fear of the depth, the fire and the fear of the punishment.

At the age of five or six, the children experience the fear of the death most often. Needless to say, even the adult is difficult to understand how the world will exist without him, and not to accept this fact. It is even more difficult for the child to do this. Why does the fear of the death appear at this age? This is due to the peculiarities of the intellectual development of the baby. He will learn the meaning of the words such as “the time”, “the age”, “the life”, and with them the fear of the death comes. The child still does not fully understand the mystery of the birth, but the realization that the end of everything is the death, already comes and causes an incomparable horror for him.

 

The parents should not think that the fear of the death at this age is the pathology. Such the fear is an affective-pointed expression of the instinct of the self-preservation. It, like all the fears in general, is more inherent in the emotional children. In the children with the mental retardation, with the cautious behavior and aggressive one, as well as in the children whose the parents suffer from the chronic alcoholism, the fear of the death does not develop.

 

How to determine whether the child has the fear of the death? This fear quite often can be expressed through the presence of the other fears closely related that is the fear of the attack, the disease and the natural elements (the water, the fire).

These fears are also present in the adults, but to a lesser extent. In the children, they are most often associated with the scary characters from the fairy tales. For example, the fear of the fire can be expressed in the horror before the fire-breathing Snake Gorynych.

 

Once on reception to the doctor a mother came with the son who was panicked afraid of the Snake Gorynych. When the doctor asked to specify what exactly the baby is afraid of, he said: “the Snake is so terrible: it breathes and burns everything!” That is, the fear of the fairy-tale character in this case is nothing more than the fear of the fire and, perhaps, the fear of the death.

 

The fear of the death is also associated with the fear of the animals: “I am afraid of the dog, it will bite me!”, “I am afraid of a worm, it looks like a snake, and it bites, - the children complain. Anything that is not understood by them or associated with the death can cause the painful horror.

The five-to-six-years-old children are very afraid of the medical procedures, also associating them with the pain, and sometimes with the death. In the clinic, it is not uncommon to observe a crying baby at the door of the vaccination office. The mother persuades the child: “Well, what are you, such a big boy! You were not afraid of the injections before!” – not knowing that the fear of the syringe is caused by the child’s understanding that he can die (the pain can lead to the death).

At this age, the child is hard to bear the disease or the death of people close to him or the animals. It is not even sympathy for them, but a pronounced fear that something like this could happen to him.

The appearance of the fear of the death should tell the parents that the child is growing up. The life itself is perceived by the five-or-six-year-old child in such a way that the category of the death is recognized by him as something inevitable. The fear of the death arises from an unwillingness to recognize this inevitability, from an emotional rejection of the need to die.

When the child begins to attend school, the fear of the death gradually passes. The fact is that this feeling is already experienced: in the child’s mind, the life and the death are built into a single concept of existence. In addition, he switches to school classes, where everything is new to him, everything is interesting. It is not surprising that his attention shifts from the realization that he is mortal to a variety of school problems.

 

When the child goes to the first class, the fear of the death is no longer obsessive and no longer causes the panic. But, unfortunately, this happen not everyone. The children especially emotionally sensitive still experience the fear of the death, which is expressed as the fear of the dead, skeletons, cemeteries and the devils at this age.

 

If at the age of five children are afraid of their own death, then at an older age they are more afraid of losing their parents. The death of the parents means that the child will be left alone; hence the activation of the fear of loneliness.

The fear of being alone is closely related to the fear of being unloved. It is no accident that a child often repeats: “Mother, do you love me?” For him, this is a way to be satisfied that everything is going well, that he will not be left alone with this huge, unknown and terrible world. The fear of the rejection suggests that your child is growing up and more delves into the essence of the life, realizing that one (and in addition unloved) to live hard.